After a day of preparation, the two fleets finally moved back to civilized space. The Wodin Warrior fleet carefully escorted the surviving ships of the Larkinson Clan, including the various prize ships.
It did not take too much effort to get the captured warships and pirate carriers moving again. Due to the abnormal way the Battle against the Abyss ended, the Larkinsons managed to capture a lot of ships intact.
Aside from the warships, the other prize ships were fairly worthless. Certainly, the Allidus Alliance invested a decent amount of resources in their construction, but they paled in comparison to proper combat carriers.
What was worse was that only a portion of the ships possessed FTL drives.
The main reasons why the Larkinsons wanted to bring back these extra vessels was because they needed room to accommodate extra mechs and salvage.
Task Force Predator truly lost too many ships. The Penitent Sisters alone sacrificed all of their combat carriers including the Surly Cockatrice.
None of the Penitent Sisters regretted the loss. The aged combat carrier had played a pivotal role in damaging the Gravada Knarlax. As far as everyone was concerned, the Surly Cockatrice met a glorious end.
The initial departure of the combined fleet proved to be a bit problematic. Major Verle and Colonel Wodin argued about the necessity to keep the main armaments of the Gravada Knarlax and the surviving escort ships on standby.
The Wodin Warriors believed that their mechs were sufficient to guard the entire fleet.
The Larkinsons did not like to be at the mercy of others. They had lived through too many reality-defying battles to assume the normal rules applied.
Ves had to step in and offer a compromise. The Gravada Knarlax’s surviving turrets would remain active, but he allowed the Hexers to disable their automatic feeding systems.
This meant that the six powerful cannons would remain unloaded. If a situation ever came up when the combined fleet needed to borrow the Gravada Knarlax’s might, a mixed crew of Wodin Warriors and Larkinsons would manually feed the rounds to the main guns.
While it sounded messy, the solution placated the Hexers. It did not escape anyone that the Hexer vessels and mechs conspicuously stayed far away from the firing lines of the heavy cannons.
Despite the numerous precautions, the Wodin Warriors still did not want to put themselves at risk in case of an accident!
Some of the Larkinsons found their behavior kind of funny.
“These Hexers aren’t as tough as they look.” An Avatar grinned. “We rushed straight at a pirate armada without any hesitation. These supposedly superior second-raters don’t even dare to get within a thirty-degree angle from the muzzles of the big guns.”
It was hard not to feel proud at the amazing accomplishments the Larkinsons had made. Together with the speeches and addresses conducted by Ves, Major Verle, the individual mech commanders and most importantly the expert pilots, a lot of the hard feelings began to fade.
Only the Living Sentinels remained problematic. Ves wisely kept his distance from their contingent. He trusted Major Verle and Calabast to soften their discontent.
With the remnants of Task Force Predator steadily heading back to civilized space, Ves put down his worries and resumed his old routine.
With the LMC getting back on track after introducing the Living Star Club, Ves could finally spend his time on mech design and other matters.
Before he committed himself to completing some of the six mech design projects, he first checked in on some other matters.
“How are you, Lucky?”
“Meow.”
His cat still looked a bit lethargic. Ves grew a little bit worried at Lucky’s lack of progress in digesting B-stone.
“Are you making progress. If this goes on, I think we need to find a way to make you regurgitate the contents of your stomach?”
“MEEEOOOW!”
Lucky reacted with such fright at his suggestion that he instantly jumped in the air! With a scared expression, the gem cat quickly padded away to the other side of the stateroom.
“Hey, I’m not that bad! I managed to treat your earlier condition!”
Well, since Lucky was healthy enough to move around, Ves did not pay any further mind to his pet.
He moved over to his display rack. He had messily piled up some trophies taken from his defeated opponents.
“I’ll need to sort this pile. My record speaks for itself. I don’t need to preserve too much garbage.”
Of all of the Nyxian pirates he fought against, only the Crona Lords, the Dry Snakes and the Allidus Alliance deserved his respect. He threw out every trophy from the weaker pirate groups such as the Rust Grinders and the Mountain Kings. There was no glory to be earned from bullying weaklings.
He glanced at his grandfather’s Prosperity Tree and noted to his pleasure that it was showing considerable signs of life now. While Ves did not believe in the superstition surrounding this stupid plant, he nonetheless felt inordinately pleased that it behaved correctly this time.
“You better keep growing, or else.” He ominously hissed.
Checking up on the Prosperity Tree reminded him of the assets he no longer possessed.
“I lost three important components of my strength.” He grimaced as he paced through his stateroom. “I can’t make up for their absence.”
Losing Nyxie, the Grand Dynamo and the potency of the life-prolonging treatment serum all at once dealt a crippling blow to his spiritual ambitions.
He already made his peace with the loss of the former. He always knew that the ancient alien tyrant was immensely powerful. After realizing that Nyxie could have been a dark god, Ves did not regret his decision to sacrifice the recovering spiritual entity.
The impact to the Doom Guard model had troubled him a bit, but it only took a single speech along with some other initiatives to smooth over this repercussion.
What truly depressed him was the fact that he had lost a powerful source of free spiritual fragments. Ves had become accustomed to harvesting potent spiritual fragments that were filled with energy from Nyxie’s body.
Now that he had lost the Ancient Sarcophagus and its unruly prisoner, Ves needed to tap into another source of energy to create another spiritual product or design spirit.
“There’s no way I can obtain another imprisoned dark god.” He muttered.
The loss of the Grand Dynamo presented a more serious reduction in capabilities. He initially obtained it as a reward for making his first masterwork mech. The exquisite spiritual machine not only inspired him to pursue spiritual engineering, but also produced a horrendous amount of native spiritual energy in his mind.
With all of the spiritual energy he produced, he frequently transferred the excess to his P-stones in order to build up a considerable energy reserve.
Those days were mostly over now. Without the Grand Dynamo, his mind churned out only a miniscule amount of spiritual energy every day. If he drained his mind of half of his energy, he would probably need at least half a year to climb back out of his low state!
That was an agonizing long time! Time was precious to Ves. Entering in a low state made him more rational, which meant he was effectively impaired in his work.
Designing mechs just wasn’t the same if he couldn’t get fired up! His style of mech design was intricately tied to his passion.
“Who can understand my sorrows?” He dramatically sighed.
The chances of winning another Grand Dynamo Elixir should be minimal. He only obtained the first one after he used up his first radiant lottery ticket.
So far, the only reliable way for him to earn this premium lottery ticket was to make another masterwork mech.
“Yeah, that’s not going to work.”
It was still a matter of chance for him to accomplish this feat. What was worse was that he had to make an earnest contribution in order to win a radiant lottery ticket!
Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding the production of the Quint and the Little Angel, the System judged that he hadn’t been worthy enough to earn this reward.
“Well, I’ll have to try my best once I complete the six ongoing design projects.”
Every completed mech design granted him a good opportunity to earn another masterwork certificate. After three successful attempts, his mech affinity should have risen considerably, thereby increasing his odds by a small but significant margin.
Combined with the quantity of projects he was working on at the same time, it would probably take a few years before he got lucky again.
“Even then, there is no guarantee I’ll obtain the prize I want from my next radiant lottery ticket.”
The whole point of lottery tickets was that the prizes he could draw were variable. The Grand Dynamo Elixir was probably just one out of hundreds if not thousands of prizes!
Ves shook his head. “Instead of pining over the Grand Dynamo, I should just accept this loss and move on with my life.”
A part of him wasn’t reconciled, though. As he ached over its loss, he tried to figure out alternatives.
He soon came to the idea of replicating it. What if he could build his own Grand Dynamo?
“It’s way too complex!”
He had already thought about reverse-engineering the Grand Dynamo a thousand times in the past, but he always gave up because it was simply too complex!
Yet… didn’t he develop a solution for that as well recently? When faced with his mother’s work, Ves had gotten so stubborn about it that he came up with a growth-based production method!
That said, back then he possessed a complete design that outlined every essential parameter.
While Ves had studied the Grand Dynamo extensively and stored a lot of notes in his implant, he never got to penetrate its inner workings. Many properties remained a mystery because his spiritual energy failed to perceive anything solid.
He decided to take a step back.
“What if instead of recreating the actual Grand Dynamo, I instead start with something simpler?”
He judged that this idea was a lot more feasible. It was just like his inability to design expert mechs.
Instead of forcing himself to design the genuine article, he could instead settle for something simpler and design a standard mech instead.
Certainly, there was a huge gap in the performance of the two. There was no way that any regular mech could defeat an expert mech in the same class in a fair duel!
Yet having at least something was better than nothing. With no other means of producing extra spiritual energy, he was already happy if he could cobble something together that was just 1 percent as effective as the Grand Dynamo!
Ves became more and more intrigued at this possible solution. “I know how dynamos work, but only in a physical sense. I have no idea how the Grand Dynamo was able to tap into the forces of a spinning galaxy. Figuring that out is one of the biggest challenges to this project.”
Not only did he have to find a way for his replica dynamo to leverage a galaxy, he also had to convert this input into spiritual energy.
One of the other fantastic traits about the Grand Dynamo was that it produced spiritual energy that was identical to his own. The spiritual imprint and spiritual attributes matched.
“Ah well, I’ll solve this problem in my own way somehow.”
He wasn’t in a hurry to produce this second dynamo. His theoretical foundation in spiritual engineering was so shallow that he had to develop the individual mechanisms first.
Over time, he believed he could make up for the loss of the Grand Dynamo.
It was different for the serum. Ves slowly drew out the vial from his pocket.
Just like before, he sensed no activity from its contents. His mother had tyrannically stripped the exceptional serum of all of its life-attributed energy.
Without it, the liquid was pretty much dead!
“Argh!”
